The transition doesn't feel like a death; it feels like being dragged through a keyhole . One moment, I am falling down the stairs and then I am no longer on the staircase. I am in a palace made of real freaking gold .
The air is heavy, cloying with the scent of lilies . But beneath the luxury, my skin screams . It feels like I have been dipped in liquid fire. My vision is a blurred smear of velvet curtains and flickering candlelight. I try to lift my hands, but they feel clumsy, trembling, and utterly alien.
Then, the sound hits me. A sharp, jagged sob that cut through the fog in my brain.
I force my eyes to focus. There, on the edge of a bed that could have housed a small family, is a girl. She looks like a dream turned into a nightmare. Her hair is a waterfall of moonlight, silver and shimmering, cascading over shoulders that are shaking with terror. Her eyes—ruby-red and drowning in tears—are locked on me. Not me, the man who had promised his mother to be good human but they are locked on the monster who owned this body.
Alice.The name surfaced in my mind like a blurry image. As the haze clear I realise she is the Princess of whatever place this is.
I try to back away, but my legs wouldn't move. Instead, they take a step forward.
That's when I feel him.
Deep inside the marrow of these bones, there is a strong ,lingering and putrid presence. That presence is definitely the true owner of this body.The haze clear further and I realise the name of the presence is Lumiere Valdyrion .He is a person of pure, unadulterated filth, and he has spent the last hour drowning this body in a lethal cocktail of high-grade alcohol and concentrated aphrodisiacs.He had fed the girl in front of him something called mana restricting potion and isolated her in this chamber.
Now, even as his soul is being forced out by the vacuum of my arrival, his base instincts remained. They are like a rabid dog refusing to let go of a bone.
"Mine," a voice hisses in the back of my mind—. "The Dragon takes what it wants. Look at her. Look at how she trembles for us."
"No," I snarl, but the word doesn't leave my throat. It only echoes in the psychic space between my soul and this stolen flesh.
The struggle begins and then it was a war for the cockpit of a crashing plane. I can feel the heat in the body—the chemical fire of the aphrodisiac—surging like a tide. My sensory part is intact; I can feel the silk of the carpet under my toes, the maddening thrum of a heart beating far too fast and most importantly the body of the girl beneath me,her cries,her resistance,her pleas to stop this and her cries. But the 'doing' part... the motor functions... they are still into control of Lumiere's dark impulses.
I watch helplessly as a horrified passenger, as this body start to force itself on Alice.
"Please," she whispers, her voice trembling. "Lumiere, please. My father... the Duke... think of the peace. Don't do this.You can still stop and nobody will know."
"The peace is a cage!" the original Lumiere's ghost screams in my head. "Break it! Take her!"
I reach down into the core of my being. I think of my mother. I think of the values she had taught me to stand up against any injustice and wrong act happening. I gathered that sense of self, that core of 'me,' and I turn it into a white-hot spike.
"GET OUT!" I roar , not with lungs, but with the sheer force of my existence.
I slam my soul against his. It is like two stars colliding. I feel his memories—his arrogance, his cruelty, his haughtiness and the overconfidence that everything belongs to him. He fights back, trying to use his existence to drown me.
I don't look at her body. I look at her eyes. I look at the terror. I anchor myself to her fear, using it as a reminder of why I had to win.
With a final, agonizing wrench, the 'Doing' part of the body snapped into my control. It feel like a circuit board suddenly sparking to life. The heat is still there, the drugs are still screaming for release, but the hands are now mine.
I force the body to stop. I grab my own right wrist with my left hand, squeezing so hard I could feel the pulse thumping against my palm. I stand there, swaying, sweat pouring down my face as I stare at the floor.
"Run," I shouted .The voice is deep and rasping, cracked by the toxins. "Alice... run."
She doesn't move at first. She is too shocked by the sudden shift in my aura—from predatory to pained.
"GO!" I scream, the effort of holding the body still making my muscles spasm.
She scramble off the bed, her silver hair flying behind her as she bolted toward the heavy oak doors. But she doesn't make it.
The doors don't open from the inside; they are blown apart from the outside.
The crash of splintering wood and the roar of a dozen men filled the room. Imperial Guards, clad in gold-chased plate armor, swarm in. At their head was a man with hair the color of dying embers and eyes that promised nothing but death.
I feel the control I had just fought for slip away as the exhaustion of the soul-battle hit me. The drugs, no longer suppressed by my focus, surged back with a vengeance, clouding my mind. My knees hit the marble floor with a bone-jarring thud.
I am dragged backward by rough hands. My face was slammed into the cold stone, the scent of the lilies now replaced by the metallic tang of blood from my split lip.
"You... you animal,".The ember haired guy said, he doesn't even look at me. He looks at Alice, who is being shielded by two female knights.
I don't try to explain. I can't . I just lay there, the cold marble the only thing soothing the fire in my skin. I had won the battle for the body, but I had lost the war for my life. The original Lumiere had succeeded.
As they haul me upright and start dragging me towards capital's dungeon for locking me up,I look at Alice one last time. She is broken.